Some vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft may need to land during non-ideal environmental conditions. These non-ideal environmental conditions may, at times, reduce pilot visibility. To enhance pilot landing capabilities under such circumstances, some VTOL aircraft can be equipped with relatively advanced display equipment to display surrounding terrain to the pilot within the cockpit. The terrain that is displayed may be obtained from detailed terrain data stored in a terrain database and/or from one or more active sensors, such as high-resolution RADAR or LIDAR. Moreover, in VTOL aircraft equipped with automated flight controls (e.g., an autopilot), the detailed terrain data may be supplied to the automated flight controls to land the aircraft.
In current VTOL aircraft, the automated flight controls only enable a stabilized approach to a hover point. During the maneuver to the ground, the pilot may still need to explicitly specify, visually confirm or modify, and continually monitor the touchdown point. In some implementations, the VTOL automated flight controls include a mechanical hardware control device that may be used to make fine grained adjustments to the touchdown point. This control device may be located, for example, on the VTOL vehicle cyclic or collective. This same control device may also be used to make relatively larger grained adjustments to the touchdown point. While this is certainly a workable arrangement, it can lead to an undesired increase in pilot workload. Additionally, this arrangement may potentially cause pilot confusion, resulting in unintended disengagement of the automated flight controls during the landing procedure.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method of specifying, visually confirming or modifying, and continually monitoring the touchdown point of a VTOL vehicle that does not lead to an undesirable increase in pilot workload and/or reduces the likelihood of an inadvertent disengagement of the automated flight controls. The present invention addresses at least these needs.